View full sizeMike Greenlar / The Post-StandardRepublican presidential candidate Ron Paul is greeted by a crowd of about 4,400 people before speaking at Lynah Rink on the Cornell University campus Thursday night. "I think the War on Drugs is more dangerous than the drugs themselves," Paul declared, to roars from the crowd.

Dressed in blue jeans, a blue Oxford shirt and black sneakers, Rep. Paul, R-Texas, spoke for 50 minutes, touching on his signature issues of strengthening civil liberties, shrinking America’s involvement in foreign wars and drastically cutting the size of government. "Thank you very much for inviting me to your revolution," he said as roars from the crowd echoed through the old rink.

The enthusiasm was in sharp contrast to Paul’s position in the campaign. During a brief interview with The Post-Standard before he went on stage, Paul acknowledged that his chances of beating former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney are slim, but insisted he still has a chance and will stay in the race.

"It would be more inconvenient not to," he said with a smile. "People have too much invested in this campaign."

Paul would not handicap his chances in Tuesday’s New York primary, seeming more interested in the importance of his message than in his political prospects.

Just a month ago, New York’s Republican primary was expected to be the first in recent history that could make a significant difference in the outcome of a Republican nominating contest. But after Santorum dropped out, Romney has been seen as the presumptive nominee.

That made Paul's appearance Thursday the closest most Central New Yorkers will get to personally experiencing the campaign. The appearance thrilled followers like Kenneth Peters, of Watkins Glen, who says he has supported Paul since 2007.

"Ron Paul seems more like a movement than a political candidate," he said. "This is like Christmas for me. I couldn’t sleep last night."

Paul's campaign is based on an eclectic mix of stances. He rails against the federal debt and wants to radically slice government by $1 trillion in his first year in office, eliminate five Cabinet-level government departments and abolish the Federal Reserve. He also wants to shut down the Internal Revenue Service and eliminate the income tax.

View full sizeMike Greenlar / The Post-StandardRon Paul supporters raise their signs for the GOP presidental candidate in Lynah Rink on the Cornell University campus. Paul spoke Thursday about strengthening civil liberties, shrinking U.S. involvement in foreign wars and drastically cutting the size of government.

As part of his civil liberties platform, he wants to repeal the Patriot Act and eliminate drug laws, which he says trample on liberties while overcrowding the nation’s prisons. "I think the War on Drugs is more dangerous than the drugs themselves," he declared Thursday night, to roars from the crowd.

Those positions won the ardor of college students like Noah Kaplan, an 18-year-old Cornell freshman who had little interest in politics before he did an assignment last year in his public speaking class at Jamesville-DeWitt High School. He decided to do a speech to his class on a political candidate and chose Paul.

That, he says, is when his passion for Paul’s candidacy -- and for politics in general -- began. He kept researching, and applied to the campaign to start a Youth for Ron Paul chapter at Cornell. He is now president of the chapter, which boasts 1,382 members and is the ninth largest in the country.

He was instrumental in bringing Paul to Cornell.

Like Paul, he believes the candidate still has an outside chance to with the nomination through a brokered convention. "Obviously I’m a little rose-colored glasses when it comes to Ron Paul," he said, "but it’s not completely inconceivable."

Paul was introduced by David Gay, a Republican committeeman in Syracuse and a leader of the local Ron Paul effort who has been holding weekly organizing meetings for the campaign for months in the back room of Holmes Pub in Armory Square. Gay voted for Paul by writing in his name in the 2008 presidential election and says he will do the same this year if Paul isn’t on the ballot.

Paul told The Post-Standard he is unlikely to pursue a third-party effort, but he added that he would find it difficult to support Romney in the general election unless Romney changes many of his positions. "He’s done that before," he added.